Wireless networks are telecommunications networks that use radio waves to carry information from one node in the network to one or more receiving nodes in the network. Cellular telephony is characterized by the use of radio cells that provide radio coverage for a geographic area, with multiple cells arranged to provide contiguous radio coverage over a larger area. Wired communication can also be used in portions of a wireless network, such as between cells or access points.
Wireless communication technologies are used in connection with many user equipment, including, for example, satellite communications systems, portable digital assistants (PDAs), laptop computers, and user equipment (e.g., cellular telephones, user equipment). Such devices can connect to a network (e.g., the Internet) as long as the user is within range of such a wireless communication technology. Such devices can use connections to a network to download video files.
User equipment can download videos over communication networks by establishing communication channels with video servers. Oftentimes, these communication channels are established using an application layer protocol, which includes the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), the file transfer protocol (FTP), telnet, secure shell (SSH), the transport layer security (TLS), and the secure sockets layer (SSL). Most of these application layer protocols use a transport layer delivery mechanism called a transmission control protocol (TCP). Each TCP flow is treated independent of other TCP flows, with no intention to relate TCP flows in the networks. Certain application layer protocols, such as HTTP, allow user equipment to start viewing a video even before downloading the entire video. This technique is called a progressive download.